1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to the field of improved computer devices and in particular to improved computer devices which permit the audible processing of remotely stored messages. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a simplified user interface which permits the audible processing of copies of remotely stored messages within a portable battery powered computer device.
2. Description of the Related Art
The modern electronic office represents a substantial increase in the productivity and accuracy with which documents and audio messages may be processed. The modern electronic office permits a single user to process large amounts of information and rapidly and efficiently direct that information utilizing computer and telephone networks to various other users, sometimes separated by thousands of miles. However, this increase in efficiency carries with it a certain lack of flexibility in that a user must be in his or her office, at the desk, logged into a computer or dialed into the telephone system in order to accomplish this work.
Telephone messages stored within a phone-mail system do not generally require real time response. That is, a user is generally free to ignore such messages until a convenient time is found to listen to those messages. Thereafter, the user takes notes as to who called and the reason for the call and discards the phone-mail message. Some phone-mail systems allow the user who is listening to a message to record a voice message response which is then automatically returned to the caller who left the message. Other phone-mail systems require the user to dial the number of each caller in order to return a message. Existing phone mail systems require a user to be connected to the telephone system and listening, for the entire duration of any recorded message, in order to process phone-mail messages.
Personal phone message recording machines are also known in the prior art, many of which include removable audio tapes which permit a user to remove a tape with recorded phone messages and place that tape in a portable tape player in order to achieve some measure of mobility while listening and processing such audio messages. However, the user must actually go to the physical location of the telephone recording machine in order to remove the tape. Further, a second portable tape recording machine, is required if the user wishes to record a verbal response. Even while utilizing a second portable tape recording machine the user lacks a method whereby the response may be electronically delivered to its logical destination, that is the phone-mail of the original sender.
Verbal communication is enhanced somewhat by the utilization of cordless telephones, since such systems permit the user to wander within a moderate distance without requiring a telephone cable. Additionally, cellular phones have greatly increased this distance, but such systems are costly to purchase and use and are sometimes heavy and awkward to transport. In either event, both of these telephone technologies still require a connection (albeit by radio) to the telephone system for the entire duration of message processing.
Recently, U.S. Pat. No. 4,837,798, issued to Roberta S. Cohen et al., and assigned to American Telephone and Telegraph Company, discloses a communication system having unified messaging wherein a user may originate, receive and manipulate messages in different native media. Messages may be translated from one media to another media for reception and a single message may be composed of parts that use different native media. Thus, the Cohen et al. system permits a user to access messages utilizing a data terminal or a voice terminal; however, the Cohen et al. system may not be utilized to efficiently process electronic messages in a portable manner.
Modern computer systems permit the so-called "telecommuter" to extend the virtual office by connecting home computers to a central computer system utilizing telephone lines. It is also possible to work with stand-alone computers, transferring the work accomplished at such a computer when it is reconnected to the main system. This stand-alone mode of operation is generally done on portable, laptop computers, giving the computer user a great degree of mobility.
One problem which exists with the utilization of laptop computers is that such units are quite large and bulky or, in the alternative, have small screens and keyboards which are difficult to use. There are also times when a computer user may not have free use of his or her hands and eyes but would still be able to process electronic documents if an appropriate interface were possible. For example, it would be desirable to permit a computer user to process electronic mail while driving; however, the inability of current computer devices to permit the processing of electronic documents without reference to a display screen and keyboard makes this impossible.
A recognition in the industry that keyboards and display screens cannot possibly achieve a sufficiently small size while remaining utilitarian has lead to the development of digital organizers and recently, a "palm top" computer which typically utilizes an icon based user interface with a pointing device, such as a pen. These devices have no keyboard and no capability of attaching a keyboard. The primary input to such devices is through character recognition and a pointing device. While these devices can generally recognize printed letters, the difficulty involved in utilizing such devices in hand occupied environments will prevent these devices from achieving universal acceptance.
A likely user interface between a portable electronic device and a user in a hand occupied environment is human speech. Various attempts at achieving such a system have been attempted in the past; however, the interface between the device and the user has always proven to be a difficult hurdle to overcome. For example, a dictation system was disclosed in International Business Machine's Technical Disclosure Bulletin, Volume 22, No. 4, in September of 1979, which utilizes solid-state memory devices to store voice input in a digitized format. The system then connects to a host for information transfer; however, the dictation system disclosed therein does not permit a user to process electronic documents.
One attempt at providing audible output associated with textual documents is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,135 entitled "Text-to-Speech Synthesis System," issued to Lin et al. and assigned to Texas Instruments, Incorporated. This system utilizes the well known Naval Research Laboratory text-to-speech algorithm; however, there is no discussion in this patent of an interface which must be utilized to permit a user to process electronic documents utilizing such a device.
Australian Patent 8,319,856 discloses a hand held speech generator which utilizes a keyboard containing phoneme keys and editing keys which represent different spoken sounds through which the final audible word may be created. The editing keys provide means for inserting spaces or pauses, backspacing, deleting words or inserting predefined strings. Such a device may be utilized by a user who is mute to generate spoken language for utilization on a telephone or other communications device; however, there is no discussion in this disclosure of a manner in which synthetically generated speech may be utilized to permit the processing of electronic documents.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,749,353, issued to Paul S. Breedlove and assigned to Texas Instruments Incorporated, discloses a talking electronic learning aid for improvement of spelling which utilizes an operator controlled word list. This device permits a predetermined list of words to be synthetically spoken by storing a plurality of filter coefficients within memory which may be utilized to control the operation of a linear predictive coding voice synthesizer. Each piece of vocabulary which may be uttered by the device must be processed in a sophisticated manner to determine what those filter coefficients must be. The talking electronic learning aid thus may not be utilized to efficiently process electronic documents.
In view of the above, it should be apparent that a need exists for a portable computer device which may be utilized by a user to audibly process electronic and audible telephone messages which are stored at one or more remote central message facilities. Further, the size and portability constraints of such a device are such that the user interface required to operate such a device should be sufficiently simple to permit basic processing to be accomplished utilizing a minimal number of controls, thus obviating the requirement for a full keyboard. Such a device should also have the capability of receiving user input in the form of audible speech and storing that input for future transmission to a remote central message facility.